Paenitentia
by Kwizzic
Summary: Here's to the dead, whose stories we know.


Here's to the dead, whose stories we know:

To a red-haired woman who loved her son more than  
her life, a life that clung to this world with nails and teeth  
digging furrows into her flesh, her flesh that hung from  
chains under the gleaming moon.

To a blue-eyed man who loved his wife more than  
his people, a people who mourned his death with flowers  
and wine and song and hate, bright hate that tore  
an orphan to pieces.

To the innocence of children, who loved and received no love  
in return, the murmurs of slurs and eyes that gleamed darkly  
with fear, the fear of returning home to find only that  
no one was there.

To the old general who loved until grief and time  
whitened his hair and dimmed his eyes, eyes that were open  
when a student he'd loved killed him on a rooftop in summer  
in a village he'd led into war.

To the student, who loved and lived in fear  
of loss, sorrow at a tombstone and the lie of white scales  
that twisted him in the dark, a dark hell where he tortured  
with methodical precision.

To the sage, whose love was tempered by life  
and laughter and war, a war that shattered him  
into pieces of unanswered questions and left him with  
only _we do what we can._

To the father, who loved his son less than oblivion  
to pain, a pain of revilement and whispers that cut him  
open and left him to bleed, blood that was sticky and warm  
on his son's bare feet.

To the son, who hid his love and his scars with a mask  
that didn't shield him from names on a tombstone  
and the price of glory, stories glutted on the fat of  
betrayal.

To the girl he killed, who loved him faithfully  
with all of her heart, a heart that he punctured with his  
hand wreathed in lightning, the flash of relief in her eyes  
not to be dying alone.

To the boy who loved her unshakeably  
as the tide, the tide of blood lapping at his heels  
dying him red, the color of eyes and clouds  
on a murderer's coat.

To the jinchuriki, whose love was carved  
out of their souls, left vessels hollow and brittle  
defenseless and dry, dry as the eyes at the  
funerals they never had.

To a man they called demon, whose love was worth less  
than his life, bleeding out on a bridge in the fog  
under new-fallen snow, melting on strewn corpses  
that could never redeem him.

To a beautiful boy, who traded his life for his love  
and called it a blessing, a mercy extended to children  
bound up in ice, ice stained with blood and the death  
of a gentle soul.

To the people of a forsaken land, who feared to love  
when the price was death, who starved in their homes  
lest they lose more _heroes_ to slaughter tyrannical  
dealt with a grin.

To a red-eyed clan that loved like an open wound,  
bleeding and festering and pouring out heartache  
that couldn't be healed, and the white-hot blade that  
burned their love shut.

To a red-eyed child who weighed one love against the world  
and found the world lacking, sentenced to death  
in a moonlit night, the first of many slaughters  
on the blade of a pacifist.

To the children of Sound, who gave their love and their lives  
as a means to a monstrous man's end, a bloody, painful end  
executed by children in the woods, accepted as fair pay  
for the smallest of kindnesses.

To a boy in the rain, who learned again to love  
and to hope, hope that dripped away in the blood of a boy  
with shining eyes, eyes ringed in circles of grief  
and the wrath of a god.

To a girl in the rain, who loved folding paper  
to make her friends smile, her friends who died as pawns  
in a madman's scheme, a man she faced under a prismatic sky  
and fought to the death.

To a murderer who loved to kill and called it art  
in splintered lives and violent deaths, the explosion  
of gleeful murder by someone who _could_  
could also die.

To the monsters who forsook love for undeath  
and carved-out hearts; hearts stitched together into  
a patchwork of fear, a heart at the center of a puppet  
vulnerable still.

To the man killed by monsters, who loved to play shogi  
and always lost, the last ember that winnowed away  
into ash and smoke, the smoke at his tomb where his student  
resolved to kill.

To the soldiers, who carried their love to their deaths  
on the battlefield, not too young to fight and die  
for cousins and comrades and children who would  
carry on when they fell.

To the mothers, the fathers, the orphans  
the outcasts, the killers, the wanderers  
the heirloom necklaces  
the crimson eyes  
the warriors doing their duty, the heroes  
with bloodied hands.

Here's to the dead, whose stories are lost:  
Once, you loved.


End file.
